Problem Mapping the "A" Drive

[Guest]

I have an interesting problem that I'm wondering if someone can help me with.
My wife's laptop runs Windows XP SP2, is a part of our home network, and it
doesn't have a floppy disk drive. She has to run an old software program
regularly that requires a floppy disk to be in the A drive the entire time.
To get around this, we copied the contents of the floppy over the network to
a folder on her laptop, shared the folder, and mapped it as the A drive.
This works PERFECTLY as long as she is home and on the local network, but as
soon as she takes the laptop outside of our house and tries to run this
program, it gives her an error message about the A drive and she can't
connect. I talked her through rebooting, disconnecting and reconnecting the
drive, and other steps and nothing worked.

I would guess that if I were to enable Offline Files this might be resolved
(even though the files are actually already "offline") , but I'd prefer not
to do that because we like the Fast User Switching feature on the laptop, and
the two features are mutually exclusive. Anyone have any ideas about how to
tell Windows that the folder is REALLY local even though it's a mapped drive,
and that it REALLY WILL work when disconnected from the network?

Thanks!

 

[David Candy]

How are you mapping it. I don't have a network and I can map drives. Map it when not on the network.

 

[Malke]

I have an interesting problem that I'm wondering if someone can help
me with.
My wife's laptop runs Windows XP SP2, is a part of our home network,
and it
doesn't have a floppy disk drive. She has to run an old software
program regularly that requires a floppy disk to be in the A drive the
entire time. To get around this, we copied the contents of the floppy
over the network to a folder on her laptop, shared the folder, and
mapped it as the A drive. This works PERFECTLY as long as she is home
and on the local network, but as soon as she takes the laptop outside
of our house and tries to run this program, it gives her an error
message about the A drive and she can't
connect. I talked her through rebooting, disconnecting and
reconnecting the drive, and other steps and nothing worked.

I would guess that if I were to enable Offline Files this might be
resolved (even though the files are actually already "offline") , but
I'd prefer not to do that because we like the Fast User Switching
feature on the laptop, and
the two features are mutually exclusive. Anyone have any ideas about
how to tell Windows that the folder is REALLY local even though it's a
mapped drive, and that it REALLY WILL work when disconnected from the
network?

Thanks!

No, of course this can't work. A mapped drive is mapped to a network
drive, and your wife's computer isn't on that network when she's not
home. Just buy a removable floppy drive for her laptop and the problem
will be solved. I've seen a usb one for around $40usd.

Malke

 

[David Candy]

Anyway subst is the command for making Dos 1 programs work on Dos 2 or higher. Makes a directory (as there weren't any directories in Dos 1) act as a drive. Join (not in XP) and Append were the other two commands that help old programs either not expecting hard drives or directory concepts.

 

[Guest]

Yeah I will probably buy a floppy disk drive, but wanted to see if there was
another solution. I may try disconnecting from the network and then creating
the drive and see if that works. Thanks for the help!